Credits: Collection Clóvis Cranchi
The Paulo Freire Method consists of a proposal for adult literacy developed by educator Paulo Freire, who criticized the traditional system, which used the booklet as a central didactic tool for teaching reading and writing. The booklets taught by the method of repeating single words or phrases created in a forcible way, which is commonly called booklet language, for example Eva saw the grape, the baba ox, the bird flies, among others. The Method goes beyond literacy, proposes and encourages the insertion of illiterate adults in their social and political context, in their reality, promoting the awakening to full citizenship and social transformation. It is the reading of the word, providing the reading of the world. His ideas were born in the context of the Brazilian Northeast from the 1950s, where half of its 30 million inhabitants were illiterate, with a predominance of colonialism and all the experiences imposed by a reality of oppression, imposition, limitations and many needs.
Freire publicly applied his method for the first time at the “Centro de Cultura Dona Olegarinha”, a Culture Circle of the Popular Culture Movement of Recife (MCP) to discuss everyday problems in the community of “Poço da Panela”.
Of the 5 students, three learned to read and write in 30 hours, another 2 dropped out of the “course”.
Paulo Freire's literacy method is the result of many years of work and reflections by Freire in the field of education, especially for adults in proletarian and sub-proletarian, urban and rural regions of Pernambuco.
In the learning process, the literacy student is encouraged to articulate syllables, forming words, extracted from their reality, their daily lives and their experiences. In this sense, it goes beyond methodological and linguistic norms, insofar as it proposes to men and women literacy students that they appropriate writing and the word to become politicized, having a vision of the totality of language and the world. The Paulo Freire method encourages adult literacy/education through the discussion of their life experiences among themselves, the participants of the same experience, through a theme/words that generate the students' reality, which is decoded for the acquisition of the word writing and understanding the world. The experiences take place in the Culture Circles.
The Paulo Freire method does not only aim to make learning faster and more accessible, but also aims to enable the student to "read the world", in the famous expression of the educator. "It's about learning to read reality (knowing it) and then being able to rewrite that reality (transform it)," said Freire. Literacy is, for the educator, a way for the underprivileged to break what he called the "culture of silence" and transform reality, "as subjects of their own history".
Credits: Collection Clóvis Cranchi
Method steps:
Investigation Stage: joint search between teacher and student for the most significant words and themes in the student's life, within his vocabulary universe and the community where he lives.
Thematization stage: moment of becoming aware of the world, through the analysis of the social meanings of themes and words.
Problematization Stage: stage in which the teacher challenges and inspires the student to overcome the magical and uncritical view of the world, towards a conscious posture.
The method
The generative words: the process proposed by Paulo Freire begins with a survey of the students' vocabulary universe. Through informal conversations, the educator observes the words most used by the students and the community, and thus selects the words that will serve as the basis for the lessons. The amount of generating words can vary between 18 to 23 words, approximately. After composing the universe of generative words, they are presented in posters with images. Then, in culture circles, a discussion begins to signify them in the reality of that class.
Syllable: once identified, each generating word is studied through syllabic division, similar to the traditional method. Each syllable unfolds in its respective syllabic family, with the change of the vowel. (i.e., BA-BE-BI-BO-BU)
New words: the next step is the formation of new words. Using the syllabic families now known, the group forms new words.
Awareness: a fundamental point of the method is the discussion of the various themes that arise from the generating words. For Paulo Freire, literacy cannot be restricted to the processes of encoding and decoding. Thus, the objective of adult literacy is to promote awareness of everyday problems, understanding of the world and knowledge of social reality.
“Studying is not an act of consuming ideas, but of creating and recreating them.”
FREIRE P. (1982) Cultural action for freedom and other writings. Rio de Janeiro: Peace and Earth (6th edition), pp. 09-12.
The application phases of the method
Freire proposes the application of his method in the following five phases:
1st phase: Survey of the vocabulary universe of the group. In this phase, interactions of approximation and mutual knowledge take place, as well as the annotation of words in the language of the group members, respecting their typical language.
2nd phase: Choice of selected words, following the criteria of phonetic richness, phonetic difficulties - in a gradual sequence from the simplest to the most complex, from the pragmatic commitment of the word to the social, cultural, political reality of the group and/or its community.
3rd phase: Creation of existential situations characteristic of the group. These are situations inserted in the local reality, which must be discussed in order to open perspectives for the conscious critical analysis of local, regional and national problems.
4th phase: Creation of script sheets that work as a guide for the debates, which should serve as subsidies, without, however, following a rigid prescription.
5th phase: Creation of word cards for the decomposition of the phonetic families corresponding to the generating words.
Based on the experience of Angicos, where in 45 days 300 workers became literate, João Goulart, president at the time, called Paulo Freire to organize a National Literacy Campaign. This campaign aimed to educate 2 million people in 20,000 cultural circles, and already had the participation of the community - in the state of Guanabara (Rio de Janeiro) alone, 6,000 people signed up. But with the coup of 64, all this social mobilization was repressed, Paulo Freire was considered subversive, was arrested and then exiled. Thus, this project was aborted. In its place came MOBRAL, an initiative for literacy, however, different from Freire's ideals.
Credits: Collection Clóvis Cranchi
“It is more than a method that teaches literacy, it is a broad and deep understanding of education that has the political nature at the heart of its concerns.”
(in: The Voice of the Wife - The Trajectory of Paulo Freire)
Freire died of a heart attack on May 2, 1997, at 6:53 am, at Hospital Albert Einstein, in São Paulo, due to complications in an artery-opening operation.